Thursday, May 13, 2010

NEANDERTHALS JUST COULDN’T LEAVE THOSE HUMANS ALONE

If The New York Times is to be believed, some Neanderthals just could be stopped from slipping out and hanging with the humans.

"Neanderthals mated with some modern humans after all and left their imprint in the human genome, a team of biologists has reported in the first detailed analysis of the Neanderthal genetic sequence. The biologists, led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have been slowly reconstructing the genome of Neanderthals, the stocky hunters that dominated Europe until 30,000 years ago, by extracting the fragments of DNA that still exist in their fossil bones. Just last year, when the biologists first announced that they had decoded the Neanderthal genome, they reported no significant evidence of interbreeding. Scientists say they have recovered 60 percent of the genome so far and hope to complete it. By comparing that genome with those of various present day humans, the team concluded that about 1 percent to 4 percent of the genome of non-Africans today is derived from Neanderthals. But the Neanderthal DNA does not seem to have played a great role in human evolution, they said. Experts believe that the Neanderthal genome sequence will be of extraordinary importance in understanding human evolutionary history since the two species split some 600,000 years ago.” (Click here for the rest)

i had the copy of eerie magazine with this as the cover,i was about 9.i bought vol 1 & 2 of his paintings when i was 15.fabulous artist.i noticed some previous poster called it `cheesey`.only because it has been so influential,copied so many times it seems hackneyed.so many of hp lovecraft`s stories seem obvious now until you realise he is the source for so many others.